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Joan Mitchell

by Marcia Tucker

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Founder

TRUSTEES

Flora Whitney Miller, Chairman

David M. Solinger, President

Flora Miller Irving, Vice President

Alan H. Temple, Secretary-Treasurer

John I. H. Baur, Director

Thomas N. Armstrong III, Associate Director

Stephen E. Weil, Administrator and Assistant Secretary

Arthur G. Altschul

B. H. Friedman

Lloyd Goodrich

W. Barklie Henry

Susan Morse Hilles

Michael H. Irving

Thomas M. C. Johnston

Howard W. Lipman

Steven Muller

Mrs. Laurance S. Rockefeller

Robert W. Sarnoff

Benno C. Schmidt

Charles Simon

Laurence A. Tisch

William M. White, Jr.

MUSEUM STAFF

John I. H. Baur, Director

Thomas N. Armstrong III, Associate Director

Lloyd Goodrich, Consultant

Stephen E. Weil, Administrator

Margaret McKellar, Executive Secretary

Nancy McGary, Registrar

James K. Monte, Curator

Marcia Tucker, Curator

Elke M. Solomon, Associate Curator, Prints and Drawings

Patricia Hills, Associate Curator, 18th- and 19th-century Art

Bruce Rubin, Associate Curator, Film

Margaret M. Watherston, Conservator

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Copyright 1974 by the Whitney Museum of American Art,

945 Madison Avenue, New York, NY. 10021

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 74-77025

Designed by Joseph Bourke Del Valle

Printed in the United States of America by S. D. Scott Printing Company, Inc.

cover: Lac Achigon. 1973. Courtesy Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris.

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

March 26-May 5, 1974

Photographs by Nancy Clampton, Helga Photo Studio, John D. Schiff.
Color, Jacqueline Hyde.

Preface and Acknowledgments

This exhibition centers around a large body of Joan Mitchell's
most recent paintings, done at her studio in Vetheuil, France,
within the past year and a half. It is a selective exhibition, and
also includes approximately a dozen works done between 1969
and 1972 which provide a five-year background against which to
view the new paintings.

I would like to thank the following people for their help with
the show: In Paris, M. Jean Fournier of the Librairie Fournier was
an invaluable source of information, photographs, insights and
documentation, and his intelligence and dedication to Mitchell's
work are gratefully acknowledged; the staff of his gallery, espe-
cially Mme. Denise Sugar, were most helpful.

My thanks also to David Anderson of the Martha Jackson
Gallery in New York, who helped in every possible way with all
aspects of the exhibition; to Irving Sandler, who wrote the first
article on Joan Mitchell's work in 1957, for generously sharing his
information and ideas about her painting with me; to Jacki Ochs
who helped with the early stages of organization; toLibby Seaberg

for compiling the bibliography; to Tim Yohn for his careful and
perceptive editing of my essay; and to Pam Adler, who compiled
the chronology and once again worked on and facilitated every
aspect of the exhibition. I am especially grateful to the lenders,
without whose generosity the exhibition would not have been
possible.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the help of Joan
Mitchell, whom I met personally only within the past year, after
long familiarity with her work. She made my stay at Vetheuil,
in December 1973, an adventure; she can turn an interviewer into
the subject of the interview instantly, and left me at the end with
as much insight into myself as information about Mitchell. She
has my admiration, friendship and thanks.

M.T.

This essay is dedicated to John I. H. Baur with deepest gratitude
for his consistent support and encouragement.

"The landscape thinks itself in me."

—Cezanne

I have often heard Joan Mitchell referred to as "a painter's
painter," meaning an artist whose work, though often not well
known to the general public, is deeply respected and admired by
other artists. The phrase suggests that Mitchell is an artist whose
work is less concerned with ideas or art issues than with the act
of painting itself— with the gesture, physicality and sumptuous-
ness of the pigment she uses.

Even though she is revered by many younger, avant-garde
artists, Mitchell considers herself a traditional painter in terms
of the influences she acknowledges and her preference for oil
paint and canvas, the conventions of "pure" painting. She herself
has a strong distaste for the concept of an avant-garde; "I'm not
involved with 'isms' or what's a la mode," she says. "I'm very old-
fashioned, but not reactionary. My paintings aren't about art
issues. They're about a feeling that comes to me from the outside,
from landscape."1 The "feeling-states" which nature (ironically
she has called it a "dirty word") prompts in Mitchell are ex-
pressed nonfiguratively in her work; her concern with landscape,
although allusory and metaphorical, is of primary importance.

Mitchell is a second-generation Abstract Expressionist, who
matured as an artist in the 1950s in New York. She was born in
Chicago in 1926. Her father was a doctor and her mother a poet;
both were extremely interested in the arts (her father, she recalls,

spoke French and was fond of Impressionist painting) but her
mother's profession had considerable influence on her. Mitchell
has always read voraciously, including a great deal of poetry. She
knew many literary figures personally and went to a progressive
high school where she was enthusiastically encouraged by her
art teacher. She was precocious and recalls, with tongue in cheek,
having had a show of watercolors when she was ten years old,
and selling her first painting in secondary school.

After several years as a student at Smith College, she
attended the Art Institute of Chicago, where she painted in a
more or less figurative mode at first; she spent time working from
the model, "getting a straight academic training." She continued
in an academic vein until 1947, when she first came to New York,
but it was not really until about 1950, when she returned from a
two-year trip to Europe (made possible by a fellowship from the
Art Institute) that she began to focus on her interest in landscape,
becoming increasingly free in her method of handling paint.

Her earliest models were Cezanne, van Gogh, Kandinsky
and Matisse, whose works she was able to look at extensively at
the Art Institute. After her move to New York, her artistic proto-
types were Gorky and de Kooning, whose work she saw at the
Whitney Museum on 8th Street, and Kline, whose studio she
visited in 1950. ("I saw those black and white paintings on a brick

wall," she recalls, "and it blew my mind.") Another strong early
influence was Orozco, whom Mitchell met when she lived in
Mexico for two summers while a student. "He was the only
painter I ever tried to meet," she says. "He got me interested in
Matisse, who he thought was the greatest painter who ever lived."

In the 1950s, once established in New York in a small studio
on St. Marks Place, she became part of that community of
painters, poets and musicians which comprised the younger
"New York School" ; she frequented the Cedar Tavern, attended
lectures at The Club and was an intrinsic and respected part of
the art milieu of the time. In 1951 she was included in the Ninth
Street Show, which Friedl Dzubas, a first-generation Abstract
Expressionist, described as "a real eye-opener."- The show was
formed by charter members of The Club, with the help of Leo
Castelli. ("I remember," says Dzubas, "Leo carrying pictures out
of Joan Mitchell's studio.") Although her first one-woman exhibi-
tion was slightly earlier, in 1950 in Minnesota, her inclusion in
the Ninth Street Show strengthened her position as one of the
important younger artists; she has shown consistently ever since.

During her years in New York— until 1955— Mitchell was one
ol the few women whose paintings were well n irom the

start. She says, with irony. th;it although it was extremely diffi-
cult being .i woman painter, especially in terms of finding a
gallery, "I had it easier because I ni thought that I could

be in the major competition, being female." She has always con-
sidered herself to be somewhat outside the mainstream in any

because of her attitudes about painting and her indifference
to the polemics ol the ait world, and because, in 1955, she
returned to France to li

In ]')")'). Mitchell acquired a studio in the rue Fremicourt, in
and ten years later moved into a house and studio in
Vetheuil, about an hour from the city; it is connected to the house
in which Monet lived and painted from 1878 to 1881 , She moved
In Prance foi personal reasons rather than as an attempt to

ipe the i igors ol th< rk art world, a move which was

. much in keeping with I • ol independence about her

work. Mitchell does not, however, consider herself an expatriate.

For the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, Europe
was to be avoided both in terms of art and life-style. A strong
sense of chauvinism characterized the late 1940s and early '50s,
when American art made its first and most definitive break from
European esthetics. However, once American artistic independ-
ence was established in the late '50s, a number of artists (among
them Al Held, Norman Bluhm, Jack Youngerman, Sam Francis)
either visited or settled in Europe. Barbara Rose points out that
"one of the most significant differences between first and second
generation artists was their attitude toward Europe. For the
second generation . . . being outside of New York gave these
young painters a kind of independence that was virtually impos-
sible for their peers who worked in the shadow of the 'heroic'
generation." :

Mitchell is the only one of these artists who still resides
there. Leading a quiet life, she sees a few friends who come out
to visit at Vetheuil— mostly painters and poets, both French and
American— and entertainment consists mostly of talking or
walking in the gardens surrounding the house. Usually, Mitchell
begins painting in the afternoon, then resumes after dinner and
works through until dawn. I Ier intellectual and physical energy
are o\ erwhelming. She is a wiry, intense person of vast curiosity
and blunt, disconcerting honesty. She listens to music of every
kind while she is painting, and paces restlessly when she isn't.
("Music, poems, landsi ape ,im\ dogs make me want to paint,"

ij s. "And painting is wh.it allows me to survive.")

The work, after the first formath e vears in which Mitchell turned
from figuration to abstraction and them e to landscape, is char-
ged by .m attitude about painting which informs her
painterly style. Mitchell insists that her work is first and foremost
about "feeling." In this sense, her attitude is characteristic of the
Abstrai i Expressionisl esthetic, which seeks the immediate

ision of a feeling through the physical act of painting, but

Mitchell dislikes the categorization of the word "expressionist,"
since her work is in no sense autobiographical or emotionally
self-expressive. "It comes from and is about landscape, not about
me." Her work, however, does express a strong sense of physic-
ality by its large size, by the importance of the gesture, and by
the residue of the painting process itself which is part of the
final image.

Nonetheless, Mitchell doesn't feel that she's an "action
painter" because "I spend a lot of time looking at the work;" she
emphasizes that she studies her work from as far away as possible,
establishing both a physical (and, by implication, a critical) dis-
tance from it. "I paint from a distance," she says. "I decide what
I'm going to do from a distance. The freedom in my work is quite
controlled; I don't close my eyes and hope for the best."4

Mitchell is highly critical of her own oeuvre; she has
destroyed many paintings and rarely repaints an area, preferring
to add color rather than to scrape down and re-do a section of
the canvas. What she seeks is "accuracy," by which she means
the successful transposition onto the canvas of a feeling about a
remembered landscape— or a remembered feeling about a land-
scape. "I carry my landscapes around with me," she has said.3
Accuracy is achieved by establishing the specific quality of light,
color, space and surface evocative of such feeling-states.

Mitchell is a landscape painter, but her images are not those
of recognizable landscape. She does not paint directly from
nature. "I would rather leave Nature to itself," she wrote in 1957.
"It is quite beautiful enough as it is. I do not want to improve it
... I could certainly never mirror it. I would like more to paint
what it leaves me with."6

Mitchell's obsession with landscape has been deeper and
more enduring than that of any of her contemporaries, and it is
by virtue of her subject matter that she stands somewhat apart
from other Abstract Expressionists.7 She is also remarkable for
remaining as committed to it today as ever; with few exceptions,
such as Richard Diebenkorn and Sam Francis, contemporary
landscape painters are realist or figurative artists. Mitchell con-

tinues the romantic tradition of landscape paintings as "a focus
for our own emotions,"" but in her case "emotions" are metaphoric
rather than personal. That she is working in a presently un-
fashionable mode is of no importance to her. She is indifferent to
the dictates of esthetic taste. She says that she continues work-
ing in this manner because she's never exhausted a subject or
"used up my material." The evolution in her work is slow. "No
changes are precipitous. The subject is in my head, a feeling about
things. I've never gone from figurative to abstract to conceptual."

Early work in New York prior to 1955 made occasional refer-
ence to urban spaces; the dense, horizontal skeins of paint,
propelled toward the center of the canvas and coalescing there,
dealt with the imagery of the city more by virtue of their suggestive
energy than by mimesis. Even in those years, though, many pic-
tures dealt with remembered landscapes from travels in Mexico,
Europe and the American Midwest. These paintings had large,
open, airy fields of white against which terse, sketchy, horizontal
skeins of paint were deployed ; they alternated with vertical drips
of paint and smudged or wiped areas situated both in front of and
behind the predominant linear latticework. During this period,
the image of the bridge was a recurrent and favorite one, an image
which related to concepts of spanning, building, joining, vertigin-
ous height and structure." In the later paintings she abandoned
urban concepts to concentrate on responses to purely natural
phenomena.

In Mitchell's paintings of the late '50s and early '60s, painterly
areas and linear markings alternate within a single canvas, the
whole appearing as a dense, flat webbing which remains at the
same visual or spatial distance from the viewer no matter at what
distance the painting is actually viewed. Such work calls to mind
Giacometti's sculpted figures, holding their tremulous, shimmer-
ing position in space regardless of the viewer's physical relation-
ship to them. The images in Mitchell's paintings float, suspended
and remote, but burning with an intensity that is troubling because
they are inaccessible. Perhaps this is what Mitchell means when
she says that she likes to have her paintings "keep still." "I want

them to hold one image, despite all the activity. It's a kind of
plumb line that dancers have; they have to be perfectly balanced,
the more frenetic the activity is."

In the middle 1960s, Mitchell's style became denser and
more painterly. Less white appeared around the edges of the
picture, and the surface became more heavily packed. A circular
rather than cat's-cradle form began to emerge around 1966 in
the La Seine group of paintings. The following year, 1967, the
circular forms detached themselves from the thinner webs and
skeins of surrounding pigment and became solid forms against
paler, more elusive backgrounds. The figure-ground relationship
of this group of paintings, as well as the subsequent Sunflower
group, directly presages some of the concerns in the very recent
work.

Mitchell has always been interested in the figure-ground
relationships in her work; in fact, this is the only purely formal
issue with which she verbally acknowledges a concern. "I do
think about how it's working," she says, "and by that I mean
making the background equal to the subject in weight. On the
otherhand, I'm not at all interested in Composition.' I don't mind

ng all tin- weight in the middle or on one side, or all the edges
finished or unfinished." In the new paintings, such as Clearing or

the figure-ground relationship i illy striking;

dark, saturated blocklike shapes and round, open forms are
juxtaposed againsl lighter, ethereal fields ol color. The active,
si ii in hied round toi ms in the earliest work in the exhibition
Suns Neige // [1969] and Blueberry (1970) appear again in Closed
'ii-rrilory or Field for Skyes in an expanded and more specifically
oppositional mode it is really in the 1970-71 group of paintings
[including Salul Sally, White Territory and La Ligne de la
Rupture] that such intense, scumbled and more calligraphii
are first played off againsl larger, blocked forms, and highlighted

aking drips thai appeal over and behind them. This i
of Mitchell's finest ise the paintings juxtapo

Bumptuous surf ace with a compositional awkwardness thai makes
them Beem almost humanly vulnerable. La Ligne de la Rupture

Sons Neige II. 1969. Collection ol Mr. and Mrs. I, eon Anthony Arkus,
Pittsburgh.

Salut SaJJy. 1970. Courtesy Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris.

"La Ligne De La Rupture" A Poem by /acques Dupin. 1970-71.
Collection of Moya Connell-McDowell, New York.

10

Blueberry. 1969-70. Collection oi Mr. and Mrs. I [enry L. Hillman,
Pittsburgh.

11

White Territory. 1970-71.

Courtesy Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris.

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12

(1970-71) shows Mitchell's extraordinary mastery of color, utiliz-
ing highly saturated, opposing hues (iridescent blues and oranges,
for example, often found in her work of the past ten years] against
areas of pale, thinly washed pastel color. The impasto and strong
tonality of the major images in this painting do not overwhelm
the more delicate passages; rather they reinforce, or reassert,
their autonomy, as though in the face of danger.

Similarly, White Territory (1970-71) has a large, squarish
area of bitter green in the top left that defies the rules of compo-
sition, but rather than being top-heavy, the painting appears to
be free of the laws of gravity and establishes its own space. Most
of Mitchell's work does not seem to be involved so much with
the illusion of space behind the picture plane as with gravitational
space, that is, above and below it. Preface for Chris and They
Never Appeared with the White, both diptychs, are two very
recent works which emphasize this spatial quality, partly because
there are fewer elements in the paintings and they are small in
relation to the fields in which they are situated.

Three major triptychs from 1971-72 (Bon/our Julie, Plov
Field ;ind Wei Orange) arc densely par. Red and intensely chro-
matic, and differ from the more recent triptychs in spatial CO!
and imagery. The la rye triptychs of 1973, such as Chasse Interdite,
Iva or (lU-.driwj,. appear to be the inverse of those preceding them.
In Wet Orange, for example, the entire surface of the painting is
equally ai tivated; color energy (areas of brillianl tangerine and
intense' indigo] is weighted againsl the somberness of massive
blocks of deep brown or green pigment. Providing a linear coun-
terpoint, drips are deployed throughout the three panels of the
painting, so that the overall effect is one ol a i ontinuous flow of

energy without a specific resting place for the I

In Clearing, on the other hand, the forms alternately con-

• and disperse; the intensity ol concentration on one area,
such as the two deep purple-blue circular forms in Clearing or
the Forest-green blocks in the center panel of l-'mld for Skyes, are
balai linst an expanse of pa i.mauves, lemon-yellows

or while

The formal elements in Mitchell's work— among them large size,
intense and subtle coloristic interplays, virtuoso paint handling,
light, multiple format, figure-ground relationships— are always
at the service of a larger concept of what painting is for her, per-
haps because she is uninterested in the relationship of her painting
to other paintings, or of herself as an artist to other artists or,
indeed, because she is not concerned with the polemics of being
an artist at all. "The painting," she says, "is just a surface to be
covered. Paintings aren't about the person who makes them,
either. My paintings have to do with feeling, yet it's pretentious to
say they're about feelings, too, because if you don't get it across,
it's nothing."

Ultimately, all formal resources at Mitchell's disposal are
used or discarded, directed toward or engendered by landscape
and, from time to time, the people and things that occupy such
landscapes in a non-literal way. Thus, the large size of her paint-
ings, their sheer energy, most often violent (as in Closed Territory)
but sometimes luminously tranquil (as in They Never Appeared
with the While'), relate less for her to the "action painting" of the
late 1950s in New York than to certain stubborn physical facts
("I've worn glasses sin i e I v\ as three, because I was farsighted.

[ways had to look at a picture from way back. Because of
this, I'm also more at ease when I'm working huge.") and, more
important, to the relationship of the artist to the scale of the
landscape itself. The immensity of sky. sea, mountain, lake, the
infinite perspective of seen landscape and multiplicity of our
pen eption of it arc translated as "felt" landscape. The emotional
corollary, which Mitchell stresses "has nothing to do with me
but has to do with the feeling that comes from landscape," is
an intensity which communil ate, more clearly in a scale which
is analogous to the scale of the subject matter.

Mi Icli ell's i mucin with having ligh I in her work is a classic
one for land'.! ape painters, lighl being a perfect vehicle for the
expression of mean in, v, Kenneth ( Hark, in a I<)49 volume about
landscape painting, noted thai "facts become art through love,
which unities them and lifts them to a higher plane of reality;

13

and, in landscape, this all-embracing love is expressed by light."11
Lawrence Alloway more recently commented that, for the
Abstract Expressionists, "light itself is part of an expressive
tradition that includes radiance as an image of revelation.'""'

Mitchell's comments on light seem to enforce this view. She
says: "Light is something very special. It has nothing to do with
white. Either you see it or you don't. De La Tour doesn't have
light; Monet hasn't any light; Matisse, Goya, Chardin, van Gogh,
Sam Francis, Kline have it for me. But it has nothing to do with
being the best painter at all."

Another formal device which Mitchell has employed vir-
tually throughout her career is the multipaneled painting; although
she has worked with single canvases, she has a marked preference
for the diptych, the triptych, and on occasion four- and five-panel
paintings. In one way she is continuing an early and venerated
mode of religious painting that began with late medieval altar-
pieces and reached a high point in the Italian altar and predella
paintings of the 16th century, or the 15th- and 16th-century
Spanish retabios. Mark Rothko's paintings of 1966-68 for the
Rothko Chapel in Texas and Barnett Newman's Stations of The
Cross (1958-66) are late examples of the expression of profoundly
religious concepts in abstract painting, and their work in this
vein from the late 1940s on set a precedent for emphasis on
content as well as formal values. Mitchell's use of the panel paint-
ing has other connotations, however, which are more in keeping
with her attitude toward nature. The use of multiple panels in
her work becomes a means of alluding to the passage of time, as
canvases with multiple images change from framework to frame-
work as well as within the confines of a single unit. The passage
of visual time, like the passage and changing of seasons, provides
a lateral dimension in the work so that the images must be read
across the expanse of canvas as well as into it. (It was perhaps
this use of the multiple format, as well as the speed and intensity
of her markings that led critics in the late 1950s and early '60s
to compare Mitchell's paintings with those of Duchamp, espe-
cially his Nude Descending a Staircase II 1 1912] .' ')

Mitchell's use of a centralized image, which occurs often in the
new paintings, does not have symbolic intent on her part, but it
does lend itself to a metaphoric reading. There are many more
rounded forms, or forms which suggest roundness, in the 1973
works than in earlier ones, providing a visual metaphor of isola-
tion, "a figure of being that is concentrated upon itself"14 which
expresses succinctly, by paradoxical analogy, what is outside
itself. The space in paintings like Les Bluets or Clearing is more
metaphysical than formal or compositional; in a sense, it is space
by implication rather than illusion. The notion of center, in fact,
is both physical and existential; the world itself, since earliest
times, has been thought of as centralized, and we think of our-
selves as being at the center of the universe. Moreover,

from the very beginning . . . the centre represents to man
what is known in contrast to the unknown and somewhat
frightening world around. It is the point where he acquires
position as a thinking being in space, the point where he
"lingers" and "lives" in space.15

Lawrence Alloway notes that

Abstract Expressionism achieved a new alignment of the
existing styles of modern art and found a way of painting
that maintained flatness without any diminishment of signi-
fication. . . . There is ample evidence [ of the artists' ] convic-
tion that art was a projection of their humanity.1'1

Concepts such as that of centralization are first learned
through our relationship to nature, landscape in particular being
a primary focus for humanity's manipulation and organization of
the environment; it is a manipulation which includes, on a less
obvious level than landscape planning, the artist's interpretation
of natural phenomena. An existential exploration of landscape in
painting was (and in Mitchell's case, still is) a major facet of

14

Abstract Expressionism, being a perfect vehicle for phenomeno-
logical rather than obvious signification in works of art.

Some insight into the possible metaphoric content of
Mitchell's paintings can be gleaned from their subject matter.
Although she does not title her work until it leaves the studio, the
titles nevertheless indicate several predominant themes which
are strong indications of her own response to the images and
feelings in her work. Among these subjects or themes are: water
(lakes, ocean, rivers) and the juxtaposition of water and land
(beaches, bridges, islands), fields and territories.

Water has always been a major source of imagery for
Mitchell, and since childhood she has been fascinated by lake
storms and large bodies of water, like Lake Michigan in Chicago
where she grew up. The concept of the lake has profound mean-
ing: for example, in Thoreau's words, "a lake is the landscape's
most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye, looking
into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature."1
Gaston Bachelard, the French philosopher, speaks of collecting
many literary images in which the pond is the very eye of the
landscape, the reflection in water of the first view that the uni-
verse has of itself, and the heightened beauty of a reflected
landscape presented as the very root of cosmic narcissism."1
Mitchell's Lac Achigon, a recent single-panel painting, distinctly
reflective in mood with a pale, blue-white shimmering surface
and two black floating forms thai appear to thrust up from the
surface rather than to sit on it. suggests in the juxtaposition of the
forms the juxtaposition of land and water with the implication
of harbor, .mother basic image with primal connotations of
security, safety, attachment or belonging. In fact, many of
Mitchell's works in which the titles refer to bodies of water.
beaches, rivers or tides, are those in which there is a striking
abutment of massive, more stable forms againsl fluctuating, even

rlapping expanses of lighter pigment; Mooring (1971) and
Plage (1973) closely resemble l.iu Achigon in this respect.

In Mitchell's many "field" paintings, among them the large
triptych entitled Plowed FieM ol IT 1 the smaller The Fields //

of the same year and Field for Skyes (1973), there is an analogy
between the formal aspects of the painting and the physical
nature of her subject matter. They contain densely packed sur-
faces, in which the bottom part of the canvas is more heavily
weighted than the top, causing the picture plane to tilt backwards
in a kind of receding image, yet remain flat. In the "field" paintings,
Mitchell tends not to use the more transient blue tones associated
with sky and water, and generally employs richer, earthier tones.
These works have a distinctly planar, horizontal cast to them,
and often the images are regularly distributed across the canvas.
The concept of the field often signifies the modification or order-
ing of nature by man; moreover, one recognizes a field by the way
in which an area is visually organized. A field stretches into the
distance, and no matter where we are in it, it extends beyond what
the body can cover easily; a clearing, for instance, can be small
enough to be rapidly explored, but a field, by definition, cannot.
Mitchell's "field" paintings are those thatmost keep theirdistance
from the viewer, that hold a single image at a remove.

The more general concept of territory, an area marked out
and distinguished from surrounding areas, is suggested by many
of Mitchell's paintings and involves an essential aspect of her
art in which the canvas itself can and does become an active,
immediate modification of her physical and emotional environ-
ment. It is characteristic of the human organism to create "sanc-
tuaries and structures of physical security and psychic identity""
bv marking off an area to occupy. Creating a "real" island upon
which to he isolated, or building a structure to separate oneself
from the surroundings says something specific— in all cultures—
about concentration, privacy, distinctiveness, even ritual. Simi-
larly, an "island" ol paint (a condensed form which stands apart
from its painted ground) can signify, or at least evoke, similar
feeling-states. A person's emotion, \\ relationship to the environ-
ment is of primary importance to the individual and to society as
well. Mitchell's remembered landscape is the source for her work,
rather than the landscape immediately al hand even in such a
beautiful place as Velheuil because, in the act of painting, she is

15

making a new environment rather than interpreting an existing
one. Consequently, certain images evoke sensations of sanctuary,
isolation and disparateness, especially in painting like Clearing
or Close where solitary forms predominate.

Territory is a clearly defined area, distinct not only by virtue
of isolation but demarcation. It implies possession, dominion,
location, personal space, definition; physical or spatial territory
is also emotional territory, depending on what is invested in it.
Visual analogies in Mitchell's work— as in Blue Territory, White
Territory or Closed Territory— suggest the definition of a mood
through the location and distinction of color. In the white paint-
ing, territory is defined by the ground, pushing up beneath a cube-
like green mass; in the blue painting it is defined by the densely
pigmented, compact blocks and strokes of red-brown, ultra-
marine and ochre. Closed Territory, on the other hand, establishes
itself by an interplay between massive, midnight blue forms and

fiery passages of loosely brushed pigment, whose struggle to dis-
place each other plays itself out over the panels of the triptych.

Mitchell's work since the middle 1950s, although not widely
known, has met with an enthusiastic response from artists as
well as a small but varied public audience. Her substantial repu-
tation is based on the fact that her work, brilliantly conceived,
flawlessly executed, shows us the extent to which a tradition can
be made viable by excellence. Although Mitchell is no longer an
Abstract Expressionist, the basic thrust and intent of her paint-
ings are the same now as they were then. What is expressed by her
work— which is private, vulnerable, full of the energy of madness
and genius, elegance and unparalleled physical intensity— are
those primal forces found in the natural world which provide us
with the metaphors for our own existence.

Marcia Tucker
Curator

16

1. All quotations from Joan Mitchell, unless otherwise indicated, are taken
from conversations held with the author in December 1973, at Vetheuil,
France.

2. Max Kozloff, "An Interview with Friedl Dzubas," Art/orum, vol. IV,
no. 1, September 1965, p. 52.

3. Barbara Rose, "Second Generation, Academy and Breakthrough,"
Art/orum, vol. IV. no. 1, September 1965, p. 60.

4. Irving Sandler, "Joan Mitchell Paints a Picture," Art News, vol. 57,
October 1957, p. 47.

5. /bid, p. 45.

6. Letter to John I. H. Baur, reprinted in part in Whitney Museum of
American Art. Nature in Abstraction, The MacMillan Company,
New York, 1958, p. 75.

7. Barbara Rose comments that the use of subject matter, or "the struggle
with semi-abstract styles," was to some extent a measure of quality in
Abstract Expressionist painting. She says that "painters such as Mitchell
and Goodnough and . . . Frankenthaler, who were inspired by landscape
motifs rather than by the figure, seemed to fare better [than others]."
Rose, op. cit., p. 58.

8. Kenneth Clark, Landscape into Art, Beacon Press, Boston, 1949, 1961,
p. 142.

9. Sandler, op. cit.. p. 45.

10. This grouping of her work from 1966 to 1972 is found in the Everson
Museum of Art's catalogue, Joan Mitchell, 'My Five Years in the
Country,' introduction by James Harithas, Syracuse, New York, 1972.
Mitchell herself says "series is actually a French word; I see the work
organized in terms of subjects, rather than 'series.' "

11. Clark, op. cit., p. 16.

12. Lawrence Alloway, "Residual Sign System in Abstract Expressionism,
Artforum. vol. XII. no. 3, November 1973, p. 39.

13. See Paul Brach, Review, The Art Digest, vol. 26, January 15, 1952, p. 17;
or Eleanor C. Munro, "The Found Generation," Art News, November
1961. p. 38.

14. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, Boston, 1969,
p. 239.

15. Christian Norberg-Schulz, Existence. Space and Architecture, Praeger
Publishers, New York and Washington, 1971, p. 19.

16. Alloway. op. cit.. p. 38.
1". Bachelard, op. cit.. ]). 210.
18. /hid., p. 209.

.irberg-Schulz, op. cit., p. 72.
20. /bid. p

17

Bonjour Julie. 1971. Courtesy the Martha Jackson Gallery, New York.

18

I!)

i ii In

The Fields II. 1971. Privately owned.

21

Plowed Field. 1971. Courtesy the Martha Jackson Gallery, New York.

22

2\\

Clearing. 1973. Courtesy Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris.

/ ifcr*

>

•

K '

! > i

■v

« ■

*■ -

.

I

' :^\k

&!1

i

25

Mooring. 1971. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Bayard Ewing,
Providence, Rhode Island.

26

Blue Territory. 1972. Collection of the Albright-Knox
Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.

27

28

Wet Orange. 1972. Courtesy the Martha Jackson Gallery, New York.

2>.)

* i

1

Chassc Interditc. 1973. Courtesy Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris.

30

:n

Field for Two — 11. 1973. Courtesy Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris.

opposite : They Never Appeared with the White. 1973.
Courtesy Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris.

32

:t:t

Closed Territory. 1973. Courtesy Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris.

34

;).->

* 4*XT- ■ *

Iva. 1973. Courtesy Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris.

37

Les Bluets. 1973. Courtesy Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris.

:t!i

Preface for Chris. 1973. Courtesy Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris.

40

' mrtesy ' • an Foumier, P.iris.

11

Catalogue

List of Lenders

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Mr. and Mrs. Leon Anthony Arkus, Pittsburgh

Moya Connell-McDowell, New York

Mr. and Mrs. Bayard Ewing, Providence, Rhode Island

Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris

Mr. and Mrs. Henry L. Hillman, Pittsburgh

Martha Jackson Gallery, New York

Dimensions are in inches, height preceding width. The medium is
oil on canvas. All work lent courtesy of Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris,
unless otherwise noted.

1. Sans Neige II. 1969. 63 3A x 443/4. Lent by Mr. and Mrs. Leon
Anthony Arkus, Pittsburgh.

2. Blueberry. 1969-70. 79 x 59. Lent by Mr. and Mrs. Henry L. Hillman,
Pittsburgh.

3. Salut Sally. 1970. 112 x 79.

4. "La Ligne De La Rupture" A Poem by Jacques Dupin. 1970-71.
112 x 79. Lent by Moya Connell-McDowell, New York.

5. White Territory. 1970-71. 112 x 87.

6. Bonjour Julie. 1971. 112 x 230. Lent by the Martha Jackson Gallery,
New York.

7. The Fields II. 1971. 32 x 127. Anonymous lender.

8. Mooring. 1971. 95 x 71. Lent by Mr. and Mrs. Bayard Ewing, Provi-
dence, Rhode Island.

9. Plowed Field. 1971. 112 x 213. Lent by the Martha Jackson Gallery,
New York.

10. Blue Territory. 1972. 103 x 71. Lent by the Albright-Knox Art Gal-
lery, Buffalo, New York.

11. Wet Orange. 1972. 112 x 245. Lent by the Martha Jackson Gallery,
New York.

12. Chasse Interdite. 1973. 110y4 x 283V2.

13. Close. 1973. 110V4 x 141 V2.

14. Closed Territory. 1973. 110V4 x 220V2.

15. Field for Skyes. 1973. IIOV4 x 212 V4.

16. Field for Two - II. 1973. 57'/2 x 45.

17. Clearing. 1973. 110 Vi x 236.

18. Iva. 1973. 110V4 x 236.

19. Lac Achigon. 1973. 94 V2 x 703/4 .

20. Les Bluets. 1973. IIOV2 x 228V4.

21. Preface for Chris. 1973. 102 Vs xl41Vz.

22. They Never Appeared with the White. 1973. 94 V2 x 141 Vz.

42

Chronology

by Pamela Adler

1926 February 12, born in Chicago, Illinois. Only child of James

Herbert Mitchell, M.D., and Marion Stobel, poet.
1942 Received high school diploma from the Francis Parker School

in Chicago.
1942-44 Attended Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.
1944-47 Attended the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating with a BFA

degree.
1948-49 Lived in Europe on a traveling fellowship awarded by the

Art Institute of Chicago.

1950 Returned to the United States, attended Columbia University.
Earned an MFA degree from the Art Institute of Chicago.
First one-woman exhibition, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Early Painted in studio on St. Marks Place. Attended meetings at
1950s The Club and frequented the Cedar Tavern with YVillem de

Kooning, Philip Guston, Franz Kline and other Abstract

Expressionists.

1951 Participated in the Ninth Street Show which was organized
by the charter members of The Club with the help of Leo
Castelli.

First one-woman exhibition in New York, at New Gallery.
IT)") Traveled to Paris again, beginning to divide her time between

mce and New York.
1 ')'>') Moved into studio in the rue Fremicourt, Paris.
1969 Acquired the home and studio at Vetheuil where she now lives.
1971 Received honorary doctorate from Western College, Oxford,

Ohio.

Major one-woman exhibition, Joan Mitchell, 'My Five Years

in the Country.' at Everson Museum oi Art, Syracuse,
irk.
1973 Received 1 7th Annual Brandeis Creative Arts Award M

One-woman Exhibition*

1950 St. Paul, Minnesota.

1951 New Gallery, New York.
Stable Call. York.

1954 Stable Gall( York.

1955 Stable Galh York,
1957 Stable Gallei York.

1958
1960

1961

1962

1965
1967
1968

1969
1971

1972

1974

Stable Gallery, New York.

Galerie Neufville, Paris.

Galleria Del Ariete, Milan.

Stable Gallery, New York.

B. C. Holland Gallery, Chicago.

Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles.

Joan Mitchell Paintings 1951-61, Southern Illinois University,

Carbondale.

Paintings by Joan Mitchell, The New Gallery, Hayden Library,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

Galerie Jacques Dubourg, Paris.

Galerie Lawrence, Paris.

Klipstein and Kornfeld, Bern, Switzerland.

Stable Gallery, New York.

Galerie Jean Founder & Cie, Paris.

Joan Mitchell, Recent Paintings, Martha Jackson Gallery,

New York.

Galerie Jean Fournier & Cie, Paris.

Blue Series, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York.

Galerie Jean Fournier & Cie, Paris.

Joan Mitchell, 'My Five Years in the Country,' Everson Museum

of Art, Syracuse, New York; and Blue Series 1970-71 and

The Field Series 1971-72 at Martha Jackson Gallery,

New York.

Ruth Schaffner Gallery, Santa Barbara, California.

Selected Group Shows

1950 oup Show, Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois.

Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, Krannert Art

Museum, I fniversity of Illinois, Urbana

Nintli Street Show. New York.

Annual Exhibition of ( lontemporary American Painting,

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

U.S. Painting: Some Recent Directions, Walker Art Center,

Minneapolis.

Annua/ Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting,

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Group Show. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

( Iroup Show. The Arts Club of Chicago.

62nd Annual Exhibition of American Painting and Sculpture,

Art Institute of Ch

ip Show, Con ni.ii] ( lallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

1951

1955

1956

1957

43

Japanese International Exhibition, Tokyo.

Group Show, Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Sculpture,

Painting and Watercolors, Whitney Museum of American Art,

New York.

1958 Annual Exhibition of the Society for Contemporary Art, Art
Institute of Chicago.

Group Show, Baltimore Museum of Art.

Pittsburgh Internationa], Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute,

Pittsburgh.

Action Painting, Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts.

Gutai Group, Osaka, Japan.

Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy.

Group Show, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.

Nature in Abstraction, Whitney Museum of American Art,

New York.

The Museum and Its Friends, Whitney Museum of American

Art, New York.

1959 Art Biennial, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany.

20th Biennale, Galleria Del Ariete, Milan, Italy.
V Biennale, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Annua] Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting,
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
1959-60 School of New York: Some Younger Artists, traveling exhibi-
tion organized by Stable Gallery, New York, with the Ameri-
can Federation of Arts, New York.

1960 Contemporary American Painting, The Columbus Gallery of
Fine Arts, Ohio.

Business Buys American Art, Whitney Museum of American
Art, New York.

1961 Group Show, Binghamton Museum of Art, New York.
Pittsburgh Internationa], Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute,
Pittsburgh.

Group Show, Dayton Art Institute, Ohio.

Group Show, Museum of Art, University of Michigan,

Ann Arbor.

American Abstract Expressionists and Imagists, The Solomon

R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

60 American Painters 1960, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting,

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Group Show, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.
1962 65th Annua] Exhibition of American Painting and Sculpture,
Art Institute of Chicago.

New Acquisitions, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Art Since 1950, Seattle World's Fair.
The First Five Years, Whitney Museum of American Art,
New York.

Forty Artists under Forty, Whitney Museum of American Art,
New York, and circulated to Munson-Williams-Proctor Insti-
tute, Utica, New York; Rochester Memorial Art Gallery; Rober-
son Memorial Center, Binghamton, New York; Albany
Institute of History and Art; Everson Museum of Art,
Syracuse; Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art, Cornell
University, Ithaca, New York; and Albright-Knox Art Gallery,
Buffalo, New York.

1965 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting,
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

1966 Art 75, Drexel Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania.
Flint Invitational, Flint Institute of Art, Ohio.
Painting, Watercolor and Drawing Annual, Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

1966-67 Two Decades of American Painting, traveling exhibition
organized by The Museum of Modern Art International
Council, New York, and shown in Japan, India and Australia.

1967 Contemporary American Painting and Sculpture from
New York, Delaware Art Center, Wilmington.

Large American Paintings, The Jewish Museum, New York.

Contemporary American Painting and Sculpture, Krannert Art

Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana.

Group Show, University Art Museum, University of Texas

at Austin.

Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting,

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

1968 29th Annual Exhibition of the Society for Contemporary Art,
Art Institute of Chicago.

Group Show, Georgia Muceum of Art, Atlanta.

Invitational, Kent State University, Ohio.

Group Show, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Foundation Exhibition, The

Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Art for Your Collection, Rhode Island School of Design,

Providence.

44

Art in the Embassies Program, Department of State, Wash-
ington, D.C.

1969 Group Show, John Bolles Gallery, San Francisco.
W'allworks Part J, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York.
The Recent Years, Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey.
Painting as Painting, University Art Museum, University of
Texas at Austin.

1970 Pittsburgh International, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute,
Pittsburgh.

Wallworks Part III. Martha Jackson Gallery, New York.

The Recent Years, Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey.

American Painting, 1970, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,

Richmond.

Contemporary Women Artists, organized by the Skidmore

Arts Committee, The National Arts Club, New York.

1971 A New Consciousness— The CIBA-Geigy Collection, The
Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York.

Younger Abstract Expressionists of the Fifties, The Museum
of Modern Art, New York.

Martha Jackson Gallery Collection, Seibu Department Store,

Tokyo, Japan.

Art on Paper— Invitational, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Uni-
versity of North Carolina, Greensboro.
1972-73 Fresh Air School: Exhibition of Paintings: Sam Francis,

Joan Mitchell, Walasse Ting, assembled and toured by the

Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh.
1973 Contemporary American Painting From New York Galleries,

Wilmington Society of Fine Arts, Delaware.

The Private Collection of Martha Jackson, Finch College

Museum of Art, New York.

Women Choose Women, The New York Cultural Center,

New York.

Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting and

Sculpture, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Contemporary American Drawings, 1963-1973, Whitney

Museum of American Art, New York.

Tenth Anniversary Invitational, University of Wisconsin at

Milwaukee.

Selected Bibliography

by Libby W. Sealf

References are arranged alphabetically by author, if known, or by title,
with exhibition catalogues listed cither under the corporate body
which prepared tl ty irfwhich the corporate body

is located. The place of publication of books and ra'
York City unless otherwise noted.

STA S BYTHE ARTIST

Mitchell, Joan. Reply to Iimny! H. Sandler' in Is Today's Artist with
or against the Past?, Part 2," Art N :>tember 1958,

p. 41

Statement in "Jackson Pollock: An Artists' Symposium, Part 2."

il 88, May 1967. p. 29.
Statement in Whitni M eum of American Art, Nature in

Abstraction, p. 75; excerpts from this statement appear also in
Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art. Fresh -\ir School, n.p., and in

Whitney Museum of American Art, Forty Artists under Forty, n.p.,
(Full entries are given under BOOKS AND EXHIBITION
CATALOGUES.)

BOOKS AND EXHIBITION CATALOGUES

son . II II. "Mitchell, Joan (1926- )," The Britannica Encyclo-
pedia of American Art, pp. 376-377. Chicago, Encyclopoedia Bri-
tannica Educational Corporation; distributed by Simon and Schuster,
1973.

Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art. Fresh Air School: Exhibition of
Paintings: Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell, Walasse Ting (introduction
by Leon Anthony Arkus). Pittsburgh, [1972?].

The Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts. Contemporary American Painting
(introduction by Tracy Atkinson). Columbus, Ohio, 1960.

Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts. Action Painting (dialogue

45

between Thomas B. Hess and Harold Rosenberg). Dallas, 1958.
Everson Museum of Art. Joan Mitchell, 'My Five Years in the Country'
(introduction by James Harithas). Syracuse, N.Y., 1972.

Hunter, Sam. "USA," Art since 1945, pp. 283-331. Harry N. Abrams,
Inc., n.d.

Kassel, 2nd Documenta. Katalog: Kunst nach 1945 (essays by Werner
Haftmann, Eduard Trier, Albrecht Fabri and Erhart Kastner).
Cologne, Verlag M. DuMont Schauberg, [1959].

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Hayden Library, The New
Gallery. Paintings by Joan Mitchell. N.p., 1962.

Munich, Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachpalais. Neue Malerei (introduc-
tory statements by Michel Tapie and Friedrich [Bayl, pseud.] Bayer-
thai; statement on Mitchell by Franco Russoli, n.p.). Munich, 1960.

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, International Council. Two
Decades of American Painting (essays by Irving Sandler, Lucy R.
Lippard and G. R. Swenson). Circulating exhibition shown in Japan,
India and Australia, each country publishing its own version of the
catalogue, 1966-67.

Sandler, Irving H. "Abstract Expressionism," Art since Mid-Century,
vol. 1 : Abstract Art, pp. 50-71. Greenwich, Conn., New York Graphic
Society, 1971.

"Joan Mitchell," School of New York: Some Younger Artists

(B. H. Friedman, ed.), pp. 42-47. Grove Press, Inc., 1959.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. American Abstract Expression-
ists and Imagists (foreword and introduction by H. H. Arnason).
1961.

Walker Art Center. 60 American Painters 1960 (essay by H. H. Arna-
son). Minneapolis, 1961.

Vanguard 1955 (foreword by H. H. Arnason; introduction by

Kyle Morris). Minneapolis, 1955.

Whitney Museum of American Art. Forty Artists under Forty (fore-
word by Lloyd Goodrich; biographical notes edited by Edward
Bryant). Exhibition sponsored by the New York State Council on the
Arts and circulated by The American Federation of Arts. 1962.

Nature in Abstraction (text by John I. H. Baur; artists' biog-
raphies by Rosalind Irvine). 1958. An expanded version of this
catalogue was published for the Whitney Museum of American Art
by The Macmillan Company, 1958, containing a statement by
Mitchell on p. 75.

Women in the Arts. Women Choose Women. The New York Cultural
Center in association with Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1973.

PERIODICALS AND NEWSPAPERS

Ashbery, John. "An Expressionist in Paris," Art News, vol. 64, April

1965, pp. 44-45, 63-64.
Ashton, Dore. Pp. 10-11 in "Art," Arts &■ Architecture, vol. 74, May

1957.

Pp. 5, 29 in "Art," Arts & Architecture, vol. 75, May 1958.

"Art," Arts & Architecture, vol. 78, June 1961, pp. 4-5.

"Art USA 1962," The Studio, vol. 163, March 1962, pp. 84-96.

Pp. 42-43 in "Kelly's Unique Spatial Experiences/New York

Commentary," Studio International, vol. 170, July 1965.
'La Signature Americaine (Maddy Buysse, trans.)," XXe

Siecle, N.S., vol. 20, March 1958, pp. 62-64.
"Au Salon de Mai," L'Oeil, no. 78, June 1961, pp. 46-53, 78-80.
Blattcockl, Grtegory]. P. 59 in "In the Galleries," Arts Magazine, vol.

42, April 1968.
B[rach], P[aul]. Pp. 17-18 in "Fifty-Seventh Street in Review," The Art

Digest, vol. 26, January 15, 1952.

P. 16 in "57th Street," Art Digest, vol. 27, April 15, 1953.

B[utler], B[arbara]. Pp. 48-49 in "In the Galleries," Arts, vol. 30, June

1956.
Davis, Douglas. "Art without Limits," Newsweek, vol. 82, December 24,

1973, pp. 68-74.
Finklestein [sic], Louis. "Gotham News, 1945-60," The Avant-Garde

(Thomas B. Hess and John Ashbery, eds.) : Art News Annual, vol. 34,

1968, pp. 114-123.
F[ischer], K. J. "Die Neue Kunst in Mailand," Das Kunstwerk, vol. 13,

July 1959, pp. 38-39.
Fitzsimmons, James. Pp. 8-9 in "Art," Arts & Architecture, vol. 70,

May 1953.
Freilicher, Jane. P. 6 in "Editor's Letters," Art News, vol. 60, December

1961.
G[oodnough], R[obert]. P. 41 in "Reviews and Previews," Art News,

vol. 52, April 1953.
G[rossberg], J[acob]. P. 58 in "In the Galleries," Arts Magazine, vol. 39,

May-June 1965.
Harithas, James. "Weather Paint," Art News, vol. 71, May 1972, pp.

46

40-43, 63. Reprint of Harithas' introduction in Everson Museum of
Art, Joan Mitchell, 'My Five Years in the Country', n.p. (Full entry
is given under BOOKS AND EXHIBITION CATALOGUES.)

Hess, Thomas B. P. 82 in "U.S. Painting: Some Recent Directions,"
Art News Annual, vol. 25, 1956.

Hfolliday), B[etty]. P. 46 in "Reviews and Previews," Art Xews, vol. 50,
January 1952.

Johnson, Ellen H. "Is Beauty Dead?" Allen Memorial Art Museum
Bulletin (Oberlin College), vol. 20, Winter 1963, pp. 56-65. Checklist
for exhibition Three Young Americans, Allen Memorial Art
Museum, 1963, is on p. 66.

Kramer, Hilton. "John Heliker: under Close Scrutiny," The New York
Times, April 6, 1968, p. 35.

Lanes, Jerrold. Pp. 296, 299 in "Current and Forthcoming Exhibitions,"

The Burlington Magazine, vol. 110, May 1968.
Leveque, Jean-Jacques. P. 40 in "Les expositions a Paris," Au/ourd'hui,

vol. 6, June 1962.

Lubell. Ellen. Pp. 60-61 in "Galleries." Arts Magazine, vol. 47,
September-October 1972.

P. 60 in "In the Galleries," Arts Magazine, vol. 46, Summer 1972.

M(ellow), J[amesl R. P. 54 in "In the Galleries," Arts, vol. 31. March
1957.

Munro, Eleanor C. The Pound Generation," Art News, vol. 60, Novem-
ber 1961, cover and pp. 38-39, 75-76.

P. 50 in fsandPn Art New 55, Summer

1956.

Nlewbill), AM. P. 28 in Fortnight in R<
Marr.h 1, 1955.

Nordland. Gerald. "Variety and Expansion," Arl

November 1961, pp. 48-50.
O'Hlara I i ml ■> and Pn Arl News,

vol. ")4, September 1955.

Pleynet, Marcelin. Pp. 78. hh in "Des idi de la peinture

Art International, vol. 15, |une 20, 1971.
Ratcliff, Carter. Pp. 88-70 in "New York Letti r, Art International,

vol. 15, September 20, 1971.
P York Letter," Art International, vol. 16, Summer

1972.

Read, Sir Herbert and H. Harvard Arnason. "Dialogue on Modern U.S.
Painting," Art News, vol. 59, May 1960, pp. 32-36.

Rosenberg, Harold. "Tenth Street: A Geography of Modern Art," Art
News Annual, vol. 28, 1959, pp. 120-143, 184. Reprinted in Rosen-
berg, Harold, Discovering the Present, Chicago and London, The
University of Chicago Press, 1973, pp. 100-109, which cites two
incorrect years as the original date of publication.

R[osenblum], R[obert]. "Dugmore, Briggs, Mitchell" in "Month in
Review," Arts Digest, vol. 29, August 1955, p. 28.

Rubin, William. Pp. 25-26 in "Younger American Painters," Art Inter-
national, vol. 4, no. 1, 1960.

Sandler, Irving. "Mitchell Paints a Picture," Art News, vol. 56, October
1957," pp. 44-57, 69-70.

- P. 12 in "Reviews and Previews," Art News, vol. 57, April 1958.

P. 11 in "Reviews and Previews," Art News, vol. 60, May 1961.

— Pp. 32, 64 in "Young Moderns and Modern Masters," Art News,
vol. 56, March 1957.

S[awin), M[artica). P. 59 in "In the Galleries" Arts, vol. 32, April 1958.

Schjeldahl, Peter. "Joan Mitchell: to Obscurity and Back," The New
York Times, April 30, 1972, Section 2, p. 23.

Schneider, Pierre. P. 50 in "Art News from Paris," Art News, vol. 59,
Summer 1960.

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"From Confession to Landscape," Art News, \ ol. 67, April 1968,
pp. 42-43, 72-73.

Dlorothy] Glees]. P. 51 in "Reviews and Previews," Art
News, vol. T)4. March 1955.

Steinberg, Leo. "Month in Review," Arts, vol. 30, fanuary 1956, pp.
46-48.

Tlillim], Slidney]. Pp. 84-85 in "In the Galleries," Arts, May-June 1961.

"Month in Review," Ai me, vol. 36, December 1961, pp.

42-45.

Tono, Yfoshiakil. Iventures in American Art," Mizue, no. 659,

March I960, pp. 23-32. Text in Japanese.

"Thi I .iris," Time, vol. 75, May 2, I960, pp. 74-76.

'Women Artists in Ascendance," Life, vol. 42, May 13, 1957, pp, 74-77.

47